This week we were allowed to choose any prompts from the spreadsheet. This prompt was "So I guess… this is the end."

Midori grabbed a beer from the refrigerator before returning to the couch, spreading out on it with her head resting on a pillow. Even with as little time as she spent here, the tiny cottage half a mile outside of Wind Path was home, and she enjoyed the opportunity to laze around watching TV in her pajamas. It was especially rewarding after more than half a year away on the job.

Well, job might have been a misnomer. Construction worker was a job. Airship pilot was a job. Even Huntress was a job. What she did was something else.

But that didn't matter right now. Right now, all that mattered was that she had a spare evening to enjoy a beer, a comfy couch, and some TV. The Mistral Regional Tournament finals were about to start, and Midori was looking forward to an awesome match. The brown-haired girl with the staff had shown herself to be an amazing Dust user, but she was also a skilled fighter in close combat. Meanwhile the blond boy with the two swords was unbelievably quick for someone still in Sanctum.

Ten minutes later it was over. The girl was no slouch, but the boy was just too fast for her. He'd avoided all of her Dust attacks before closing the gap and beating her down with lightning fast sword strikes. She held out against him for a long time, but in the end she couldn't keep up. Still, it was a good match, one that both fighters could be proud of.

Midori took one last swig of beer before tossing the empty bottle into a trashcan on the other side of the room. She turned off the TV with the remote and was about to settle down to go to sleep when she heard a knock at the door.

Who could that be?

Midori rose from the couch and made her way to the front entrance. She drew her pistol from the belt she had draped over a coat rack and opened the door a crack.

A paper bag was sitting on her porch. It was on fire.

Midori threw the door open and raised her empty hand. A wave of intense cold emanated from her palm, extinguishing the fire and freezing the bag. That was when she noticed the foul stench coming from the previously burning bag.

Who the fuck came all the way out here for a prank like that?

Midori stepped around the frozen bag and onto the porch, looking around the meadow surrounding her cottage. It was dark, but the prankster couldn't have gotten far between when he or she had knocked on the door and now. Sweeping her gaze from left to right, Midori spotted a tall figure standing fifty yards away holding something in their outstretched right hand.

That was when her porch exploded.

Midori was hurled away from the house, landing on her chest more than a dozen feet from the door. Her whole body hurt, and the explosion had nearly deafened her, not to mention that it shattered her Aura. She had a headache that likely meant she'd taken some shrapnel to the skull. She tried to move and felt a searing pain in her right leg. She glanced at the appendage to see a long nail embedded in her calf.

Midori realized that someone had used a bag of flaming shit to make her lower her guard. Thinking she was up against a childish prankster, she hadn't been ready for a remote-detonated bomb full of nails. The thought that she'd been so easily deceived hurt almost as much as her leg.

She glanced up at her attacker, who was now walking calmly towards her. He, it was visibly a he now, was tall and thin and wore a long trench coat that was opened to reveal his scarred chest. He had bladed contraptions mounted on both of his wrists.

Midori should have been helpless before him. Her Aura was broken, her weapon had been lost in the explosion, she couldn't put weight on her right leg, and she felt sluggish from the headache. But she still had tools left to defend herself.

Her eyes began to glow with a golden light, and she raised her right hand towards her attacker. A blast of fire more powerful than the military's best flamethrowers shot from her palm to engulf the man, but he leapt out of the way with incredible speed. Midori's eyes widened and she unleashed a bolt of lightning from her fingertips. Unbelievably, the man twisted out of the way of that too and continued his advance towards her, now at an angle that was difficult to see from her prone position.

Midori struggled to her feet, putting most of her weight on her left leg. She raised both her hands and prepared to summon a torrent of fire to incinerate her attacker. But before she could, he pointed both of his arms at her at a downward angle. The weapons on his arms lit up with muzzle flashes, and Midori screamed as bullets tore through both of her knees.

She nearly collapsed forward, but the man stepped in and caught her by the shoulders, holding her upright. She met his violet eyes for a moment before feeling a jab in her stomach. She looked down to see a scorpion's tail embedded in her abdomen. She dimly imagined that she could feel the venom coursing through her body. She looked back up at the man's face to find him smiling like a maniac. Then he pulled back his right arm and punched her in the face, sending her crashing to the ground.

"So I guess… this is the end," panted Midori. She had nothing left.

"Oh no, my dear," replied her attacker jovially. "Fret not, you will not die tonight. The poison is just to keep you docile; I have the antidote right here in case it starts to kill you. The Queen wants you alive."

"In that case," she whispered. "It's definitely the end."

She was beaten. With as much pain as she was in, there was no way that she could break his Aura and defeat him before he knocked her unconscious. But there was still one thing she could do.

Midori called on her power, and her chest bucked upwards as the blood in her pulmonary vein froze, rupturing the vessel and piercing her heart. Her assailant ran to her side, but it was too late to do anything.

Oh right, I need to think of a girl when I die.

Midori struggled to remember a young woman who was worthy of the maiden's power, but she was dying too quickly. All she could think of was the fight she had just seen on TV.

What was that girl's name? Oh yeah… Amber.

I figured an open-ended prompt deserves an unexpected story. So this is what I came up with.